Great article on the enigma of Laocoön:
I can't find it at the moment, but I do know Darwin himself had things to say about the Laocoön: one comment about its anatomical inaccuracy in the eyebrows, but I think there was more...
In his 1872 The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals, he thought terror looked more like this:
Darwin wrote:
Horror is generally accompanied by various gestures, which differ in different individuals. Judging from pictures, the whole body is often turned away or shrinks; or the arms are violently protruded as if to push away some dreadful object. The most frequent gesture, as far as can be inferred from the acting of persons who endeavour to express a vividly-imagined scene of horror, is the raising of both shoulders, with the bent arms pressed closely against the sides or chest. These movements are nearly the same with those commonly made when we feel very cold; and they are generally accompanied by a shudder, as well as by a deep expiration or inspiration, according as the chest happens at the time to be expanded or contracted. The sounds thus made are expressed by words like uh or ugh.28 It is not, however, obvious why, when we feel cold or express a sense ofhorror, we press our bent arms against our bodies, raise our shoulders, and shudder. (Darwin, Expression, p. 307)
Unfortunately, that could easily be confused for something else, since what they did to elicit this emotion and the others and record it was to zap some poor guy's brain with electricity.
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